Where did the text segment get its name?
compiler-construction, history, internals
Solution
Going a little further with nos's comments, I turned up a scanned version of the GE-635 Programming Manual, and found the following in the section on the macro assembler:
The GE-625/635 Macro Assembler is being provided to give the professional programmers some of the conveniences of a compiler and the flexibility of an Assembler. [...] The output options enable him to obtain binary text in relocatable as well as absolute formats.
So, it appears that the use of "binary text" was a GE colloquialism, or perhaps a commonly used term at the time (remember that those were the days when card readers/punches were used for much IO). So, one possible path is GE, to Multics via GE-645, to Unix via Bell Labs' work on Multics, to Linux.
Problem
Traditional assembler, and higher level compilers work with several memory segments, according to intended use. Hence, there is a data segment, a stack segment, a bss, and text segment. The text segment is also called the code segment. Text segment? For machine code? I have asked all the old-timers I could find, how something as unreadable as machine code came to be know as the "text segment". Every one of them agreed that, that was really what it was called, but none of them seemed to be surprised by it. And no one could offer an explanation. Here's your chance to show off your geek history knowledge by enlightening us.